The Trouble with Unity

Only last summer, when revolt blazed in Beirut and Baghdad, most of the prophets on the scene forecast that the racing fires of Arab nationalism must shortly fuse the Arab East into one great state. Realists urged the West to quit backing losing friends and to get right with the winners. They pointed to the miserable conditions in the lands ruled by Western allies, but had less to say about the unchanging misery in the lands of the winners. Nasser himself seemed almost plausible when he shouted that scheming colonialists had split the Middle East to rule it, drawing their arbitrary lines of empire across the indivisible Arab sands.

Yet last week the world was discovering once more that it takes only a brief spell of quiet to revive the ancient animosities and divisions that have made Arab unity largely fiction ever since the Prophet's heirs fell out more than 1,300 years ago. Egypt was embroiled with its neighbors--the Sudan, Libya, Tunisia--as well as with others who, fearing the power of Nasser's propaganda, dared not defy him publicly. In Iraq, whose revolutionary regime seized power in the name of Arab unity, the ruling officers quarreled, and the uprising, far from ending the historic rivalry between Egypt and Iraq, appears only to have sharpened it.

Divide & Rule. The latest twist in Middle East rivalry is that imperialist Moscow is back at playing a divide-and-rule game among the Arabs. Only six months ago, Khrushchev had told Nasser in Moscow: "You will have all necessary help from us" in uniting the Arab people. But despite their recent promise to lend money for the Aswan Dam, the Reds are tying more and more knots in their tight economic strings on Cairo. And the Communist Party is emerging in Syria and Iraq as the violent foe of further Arab unity under Nasser. The Communists know that Nasser suppresses the party in Egypt, and that he took over Syria when its leaders felt that the only alternative was going Communist.

The latest Communist switch dates from September, with the arrival in Cairo of the Soviet Union's newest authority on Middle East affairs. Nuritdin Akramovich Mukhitdinov, 41, a Moslem from Tashkent who last year was promoted to the ruling Soviet Presidium, is its youngest member and only Moslem. Shortly after Mukhitdinov had four sessions with Nasser, Syrian Communist Chief Khaled Bakdash returned from exile in Eastern Europe to Damascus, and Mustafa Barzani, famed Kurdish rebel long harbored in Soviet exile, arrived back in Iraq. The Kurds (whose great leader in the time of the Crusades was Saladin) are a volatile minority of 5,000,000, spread across Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran and southern Russia. Openly defying Nasser's ban on party politics, Bakdash is publishing a Communist newspaper in Syria. But Barzani remains harmlessly holed up so far in Baghdad--presumably because Iraq's Premier Kassem is resisting Nasser's merger, which suits Moscow's desires.

Rock & Rule. The U.S., committed to helping preserve the independence of Middle East countries that ask its help, had shored up Lebanon and is now underwriting Jordan. This week the test of whether Arab nations can keep their independence--even such an impoverished sand kingdom as Jordan--is being put to the test. Less than three weeks after British troops left, the confident young King Hussein planned to take off for a three-week "convalescent leave" and vacation in Europe. The question was whether his nation would stay quiet in his absence, under tight police control inside and the counterbalancing of rival ambitions outside. The Middle East was showing no signs of coming to rest.

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